Marty Most is not alone

[DFRANK@OREGON.UOREGON.EDU (David Frank)]

I know we want academic debate to flourish.  Larry, Marty, Mike, and those 
who are still on CEDA-L do share the desire to see academic debate provide 
our community with a non-violent means of problem solving.  However, in the 
last twenty years, Marty Most and I have seen a number of forensics programs 
die, nationally and in our region.    Forensics programs die because 
directors of forensics burn out, or they leave and their positions are not 
replaced, and because forensics does not have broad support.   We have not 
garnered support because we create abusive environments for Directors of 
Forensics (see Steve Hunt's CEDA Proceedings Paper) and the debate culture 
supports irrational reasoning and violent habits of communication.  Marty 
Most has kept the program at Boise State alive and well, and his opinions 
should not be dismissed easily; he is a good educator, and he clearly 
understands the trinity many worship in CEDA world: Tabula Rasa, critical 
thinking, and playing games. He also understands, but finds 
anti-educational,  many of the habits mind and expression practiced in CEDA. 
 He is not alone.

Academic debate is in a state of crisis; and CEDA is at the center.  I love 
debate, and wish to see its benefits distributed to our students and 
community.  As a supporter of debate, I agree with other supporters who 
argue that we have become too "isolated" (These are the words of David 
Zarefsky, former director of debate at Northwestern, and a great advocate of 
academic debate) and that many of our practices are irrational.  For a 
useful reading, I ask that the defenders of the status quo read Robert 
Rowland and Scott Deathererage's "The Crisis in Policy Debate" in the spring 
1988 issue of JAFA.  They write:  "Academic policy debate is in a state of 
crisis. . . . Too often zeal for winning debates encourages 
incomprehensibility, poor evidence analysis and comparison, and a lack of 
argument explanation. . . .  To many outside observers the practices that 
are common in NDT debate (which are becoming far more common in CEDA) seem 
absurd."  Rowland and his partner were champions of NDT.  Finally, witness 
Joe Tuman's statement in the 1993 Yearbook that our culture has produced 
"shoddy scholarship, overclaiming of evidence . . . . confusion and 
misapplication of positions" and Carrie Crenshaw's well reasoned conclusion 
in the same issue that we are not teaching our students the role of proof in 
causality.  Zarefsky, Rowland, Deathereage, Tuman, Crenshaw, Most and  Frank 
are all friends of debate.  And all believe that debate educators and the 
speech communication field need to do a better job of teaching good 
rhetorical scholarship.  We are failing in that job.  

Larry, we cannot and should not defend the practices you describe, for they 
are not educational or indicators of good rhetorical scholarship.   And, 
Marty Most, you are not alone.

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